Category Archives: Search Engine Optimization

5 Steps to Creating “Ambient Awareness” With SEO!

The world of business is always changing and looking for the next big thing. This is one of the thing s that makes this business so exciting. There is never a time when it is ok to sit back and watch or wait. In the world of business if you are not moving forward then you are being bypassed by the competition. If you are looking for the next big thing in business then there are a few things that you need to understand.

One of the best new trends in the world of business is the study of how people think and process information. An industry term for finding this information is called ambient awareness. This is a very exciting new field that seeks to take information from the people and use this information in such a way as to draw these people into your particular business arena. This is not some kind of secret operation handled by the government but rather this is the new world of business. Lets look at ambient awareness and how this can work for you in the world of SEO and web design.

The first step in ambient awareness is understanding what ambient awareness is. Ambient awareness is the act of understanding what a person or a business is looking for based solely on the comments they make in social media mediums such as Facebook or twitter. In normal situations little thought is given to what a person has to say in one status update or even a small tweet. However, when these items are looked at as a whole, the picture of the individual becomes much clearer. Ambient awareness simply means that you are willing to look at the whole picture.

Second, it is important to understand SEO. This is a fancy way of saying search engine optimization. This is the practice of making your web site more efficient. This becomes possible when you understand the topics of interest that people are looking for. When you understand what people are looking for then you have a better chance of offering them what they want.

Third, when coupled together, SEO and ambient awareness are a team that never quits. If you have the ability to understand a persons social media habits and are able to couple that with an ability to properly use SEO, your business will skyrocket. So how can you create this ambient awareness?

Fourth, spending time in social media venues is the most important thing that you can do. Interact with your friends and relatives. Pay attention to what they are sharing. Do their posts reflect the current media trends? Are they referencing anything in the news? If so then you are on the right track.

Finally, be willing to adapt and meet new people. This is perhaps the best key or “secret” in making ambient awareness work. If you are unable to meet new people then you will be severely hampered in your efforts to market a product based on the desires of people.

Resource Box: SEO Solutions can help you create ambient awareness with the latest SEO techniques. Take your website to the next level at seosolutions.us.

 

What Search Engines are Looking for in 2013!

  1. the volume of incoming links from similar websites
  2. quantity and quality of content
  3. technical precision of source code
  4. spelling,
  5. functional v. broken hyperlinks
  6. volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic
  7. time within website
  8. page views
  9. revisits
  10. click-throughs
  11. technical user-features
  12. uniqueness
  13. redundancy
  14. relevance
  15. advertising revenue yield
  16. freshness
  17. geography
  18. language and other intrinsic characteristics.

Keep these 18 factors in mind when launching a new SEO campaign for 2013. Content is king, keep your page fresh, relevant and easy to navigate/read and your already ahead of your competition.

Bing Finally Proclaims Their Webmaster Guidelines (SEO)

The release of Bing Webmaster Guidelines (finally) came as a big news to the SEO
community. It helps webmasters and publishers get their content found and indexed
on the search engine.

With the release of the new Bing Webmaster Guidelines, the company is committing to
being a webmaster-friendly service that puts their needs at the top-of-mind, and
although the Guidelines aren’t much different than Google’s, they do provide a great
refresher on what how Bing crawls, ranks and indexes sites.

Let’s take a look at some important points:

Content

Webmasters must provide “clear, deep, easy to find content” on their sites that make it
more likely to be found, and ultimately indexed and shown in search results. This also
includes images, white papers and videos, among other types. Rich, content-heavy
sites that engage users and provide valuable and refreshed information are always the
most sought after.

Social

Bing frequently points to social sharing signals as a major way that the search engine
measures influence. And since Facebook has significantly more users than Google+,
Bing may very well become the standard search engine for socially inclined search
results.

Indexation

Bing explains that the best ways to be indexed by the search engine is to either link
your content to Bing or use features that come with the Bing Webmaster Tools (e.g.
Submit URL or Sitemap Upload) to make them aware of your content.

Technical

This section of the Bing Webmaster Guidelines examines a variety of different
structural aspects of a website that can affect how they are crawled, indexed and
eventually ranked on Bing’s SERPs. These include page load time, robots.txt, sitemaps,
site technology, redirects and canonical tags.

Search Engine Optimization

The section directly distinguishes the key areas to put emphasis on when optimizing
their websites, which include title tags, meta description tags, alt tags, <h1> tags,
internal links, outbound links, social sharing, “crawlability” (i.e. XML sitemaps,
robots.txt, navigational structure, URL structure, etc.), site structure (i.e. links, clean
URLs, content hierarchy, etc.) and rich media.

It also breaks down specific on-page SEO information about head copy, body copy,
anchor text, content and links. For instance, it suggests using unique, relevant titles and
descriptions that are around 65 and 160 characters, respectively. The Guidelines also
inform webmasters that they should only use one <h1> tag per page, base their content
on keyword research, don’t use images to house content, use targeted keywords as
anchor text to support other internal pages, use “rel=canonical” tags to help engines
understand which pages they should index and much more.

Tactics To Avoid

Bing Webmaster Guidelines also mention a handful of different tactics that webmasters
should avoid. In particular, the Guidelines warn against cloaking, using link building
schemes (i.e. link farms, three-way linking, etc.), meta fresh redirects, duplicate content
and social media schemes.

While the suggestions laid out in the Bing Webmaster Guidelines aren’t revolutionary,
they do work as a great source of information for webmasters as they work to optimize
their sites for search engines, particularly if they want to improve their Bing rankings.

What Precautions You Need to Take While Hiring an SEO Company

Search Engine Optimization is an extremely effective method of advertising your business on the internet. With the ever-growing popularity of search engines and technology this trend will continue to increase. However, some SEO companies are not as ‘real’ as they seem.

1. Shy away from SEO consultants who guarantees you to be on the first page of a search engine.

2. Be sure to ask for references to call on before hiring the SEO company you are considering. A world of information can be learned by calling on a few past clients.

3. Make sure they provide you with a clear report on what they are doing to improve your rankings as well as a report on the status of your keywords in regards to where they are ranking on a weekly to monthly basis.

 

Resource Box: SEOsolutions.us a Chicago SEO company is ready for all of the above and more. We do not make any guarantees we cannot keep and we always practice Google friendly SEO tactics to prevent your site from being blacklisted from Search Engines.

SEO is ART

Advantageous, Rigorous and Transforming.

The art of Search Engine Optimization lies in the three words above.

Today we use the internet for everything, research, games, socializing, videos and A LOT more! SEO takes internet marketing to a higher level than simple banner ads and certainly Google’s paid advertisement! Over 80% of searchers skip the first few results because they are advertisements, regardless of how relevant they may be. So it is important to have organic results that are essentially “home grown” rather than paid for.

With over 2 billion searches logged by Google alone every single day (and this number is rising daily), having a method of standing out in those searches is critical to your business’s growth.

  • ADVANTAGEOUS– Implementing a SEO campaign for your businesses website gives your site an advantage over other comparable or related sites (your competition!).
  • RIGOROUS — Search Engine Optimization is also a rigorous process, if done by the right firm it should be a very thorough process that employees many on-page and off-page optimization techniques to improve your rankings!
  • TRANSFORMING — SEO is transforming because it can take a website from having one hundred views a month to over a thousand views a month. SEO can literally transform your website into a high traffic site that will yield results.

seosolutions.us

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How to Compete Effectively Using SEO

A Chicago SEO Consultant insists that in order to use SEO most effectively you may want to find words that are less competitive but still relevant to your industry/service/business. There are three great ways you can stay relevant while reducing your keyword competition and your ranking competition. Taking your keywords and narrowing them down here is the objective.

 

  1. Use Geo-targeting to narrow your keywords, for a firm in Chicago, IL you may want to use SEO Company Chicago. Or you may want to keep it within the state, SEO Company Illinois or IL (both will receive different results as IL will be considered a different word than Illinois to search engine bots).
  2. Try to concentrate on the little things that your business does best or the ‘niche’ you are a part of; really drill down on how people search for business – This may mean choosing more keywords than you had originally planned for. That is fine because now you are narrow but covering a lot of that ‘niche’ market.
  3. Hire an SEO consultant or firm to provide you with keywords they have analyzed, tried in the past or researched (based on competition) to get you ahead of the competition without wasting too much time guessing the most applicable keywords.

I hope this helps give my readers an idea of how to stay relevant in your industry while choosing the keywords you need to optimize in order to increase traffic to your website and ultimately sales. Please feel free to comment and ask questions.

How Small Businesses Find Their Way on the Internet

Small businesses don’t typically have a whole lot of money to spend on advertising. They search for ways to get their name out to the public as efficiently as possible, word of mouth is great. However, a very large amount of small businesses are starting to use the internet to promote themselves. This is because they can experience the best and most efficient results from internet marketing. Their message and advertising campaign can be customized and tailored to their specific needs in thousands of ways.

Almost all small businesses nowadays have websites. This is the window for the world to see them through; their personal viewing portal that can be accessed by anyone at any time. With a million small businesses comes a million websites, so now the key is to get your site found. Every small businesses website can bring them to greater successes in their business.

  • Creating a sound SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program is one option to choose from when advertising on the internet. It is one of the best marketing methods and produces one of the highest ROI’s.
  • Choosing to use a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign can be effective for specific products, especially during the holiday season!
  • Another good way to add to your websites traffic is to keep a steady stream of information flowing through the site.  Blogging with good relative content can be an extremely effective way of keeping your consumer interested. If they have visited your site they are clearly interested in your service or product and may want to stay informed.
  • Social media is another good way for consumers to follow your company which allows you to provide good material on your product or service for the consumer to digest in their own life on their own time.

With an ever-growing Internet population keeping a strong presence on the internet for your small business is critical in the growth process. A good website with streaming content that can be found by those who need it will thrive on the internet. This type of website will allow for a company to grow beyond its current potential and reach new heights in sales.

If you’re small business is looking for an SEO consultant, look at www.seosolutions.us. We are a Chicago SEO company that specializes in Search Engine Marketing and other Internet marketing techniques.

SEO – It Takes Time

Search Engine Optimization is a process. During the first years of search you could get away with grabbing keywords and stuffing them into your website to drive rankings. Another method people used to get away with was using meaningless links from and to their websites. Google’s algorithm has changed immensely since 1998 when it was introduced to the public. Now if you want your website to appear on the first page of Google there are several important steps to take and some things to avoid as well.

First things first, content is king. Having a website with good content is extremely important. Having the right amount of keywords mixed into that content is also important. To many keywords can get your rankings lowered while to little keywords can do the same thing. Maintaining a relevant website that provides people with important information will not only increase your rankings but will also increase your websites retention rate which is just the amount of first time visitors that return to your website for a second and third view.

Second, links are no longer viewed as always being a good thing. Google has caught onto the fact that people are link farming; simply linking to as many websites as they can (relevant or not) in an attempt to increase their websites rankings. In order to maintain your rankings or increase them your link building needs to be appropriate. Linking to other sites related to yours that are seen as ‘good’ sites by Google (meaning they follow the rules and provide relevant content) is a great way to increase rankings.

Third, don’t think keywords and good content is the silver bullet. Stay in the mix of things by creating strong social presence; Google and other search engines are taking into account social circles more than ever. In an attempt to compete with Facebook, Google launched Google circles, a new social media site where you can invite people into different circles based on their relationship to you; work, school, friends, family. These social circles (facebook or Google Circles/Google+) are the new way for Google to start ranking how important/relevant your site is.

Finally, stay relevant with good OFFPAGE optimization. Some good ways to do this is to write articles about your industry and submit them to article directories which are basically phone directories for websites on the internet. While articles are great, you can blog about your industry and stay social while doing it. Creating a blog that people read and learn from is a great way to bring traffic to your website. You can also guest blog on other peoples websites in order to increase your online presence.

Remember that content is King! Good content and the right targeted keywords will increase your rankings. Stay focused on good content with about 8% keywords and brining your website efforts to social media and other online activities such as blogging and you will have a nice SEO start.

www.seosolutions .us – An Illinois SEO company, Chicago based.

A Few Words on SEO / Important UPDATES!

SEO UPDATES!

Search has become one of the best marketing tactics to increase ROI since marketing was invented. Not only does it produce results but it allows the marketer to geo-target, check important analytics and act on those analytics to implement stronger and stronger campaigns month after month.

With the new Panda Updates Google has deployed websites that use a tactic called link farming are being punished. Farming links, which is at its core, building links to your site to make it look popular when the content is nothing but garbage.  So what do we do now? Well those of us who use unique content and a little bit of hard work to drive rankings are in luck. We continue to blog and write press releases every week. That’s how you stay relevant; you give people what they want without shoving it down their throats!

The beauty of a good search campaign is that once you deploy all the right tactics and you “get rolling”. It is much easier for you to continue to drive your rankings. The tough part is getting started. This may be because results aren’t immediate and small businesses typically don’t have money to blow without seeing an ROI relatively fast. However, medium sized businesses seem to stick around long enough to truly reap the benefits of a campaign that is driven and lead to a strong online community and presence that is interactive and growing.

Search Engine Optimization: The Basics

Let’s concentrate on the basics. What exactly is search engine optimization? It is the process (and it is a process indeed) of organizing your site with specific keywords while creating links to your site via social media, blogging and other marketing venues.

 Keywords can be single words or phrases. A keyword for a construction company may be for example; Campbell Construction, Illinois. This keyword would be considered a phrase. Notice how Illinois is also attached the end of the phrase. This is an excellent way to geo-target your marketing audience. This also works by county, township and can also be done using zip codes.

Another huge aspect of creating a great Search Campaign is making sure that the site is set up correctly on-page. This may be anything from having a strong domain name to load-time to having strong written content, and the amount of content and the specific ratios of keywords mixed into your content will affect rankings.

However, off page optimization is also important, these are all the activities performed away from the website but are in one way or another linked back to your website. Off page optimization activities range from a large number of things from blogging, to social media campaigns to video creation and deployment, press releases and more. It is important for most businesses to concentrate on their own business while hiring an outside firm to implement a strong online campaign that will boost search engine rankings.

Shocking Statistics about Search:

  •  Google is the most popular search engine.
  • Over 500 million searches are completed daily
  • 85% of online traffic only views the first page on search engines
  • 85% of traffic finds accurate information which is useful to them.
  • 81% of online users find new websites from using search engines.
  • 73% of online transactions start with the use of search engines